The Experiment

What Is The Experiment?

There is a revolution in music happening now.

You won't read about it in the mainstream press. Or see it on MTV.

It's happening online and at small events around the country.

Thing is, bands no longer need record companies.

Bands can now record, promote and distribute themselves on a global stage.

The big record companies know this, which is why you haven't heard about it.

'Why is this a good thing?' I hear you ask.

It means that for the first time in the history of the music industry artists really do have the power, they can keep the rights to their recordings, and maintain creative control of their work.

And to break it down even further using this simple formula -

Musician + Creative Independence x Freedom = Seriously Good Life Changing Music That Rocks Intensely

So, what we need now is a new framework.

How can artists use this new media revolution to get heard, get seen and make sales?

What shape is the future music business going to take?

And perhaps more importantly -

What shape do you want the future music business to take?

The Experiment is an attempt to answer some of these questions.

The Experiment is an attempt to create a new framework.

We hope you enjoy the journey.

The post that started it all

The corporate creative and media industries are facing the threat of a new and permanently changed media landscape. Rather than it being the preserve of a select few, it could now be said that EVERYONE is in the business of media creation and distribution.

Using the tools of the new media independent artists have the potential ability to leverage attention on a scale not previously achievable. This will not be the case forever, the industry is constantly looking for ways to reassert its dominance in the field and maintain its authority and financial interests.

The actions and activities of the corporate creative and media industries, are, like all other giant corporations, unsustainable and not conducive to creative thinking or individual artistic development.

In short, can artists make use of the current situation to create sustainable and profitable lifestyles without engaging with the current industry framework? And, in doing so create potential roadmaps for other independent minded artists to follow.

This experiment is not for everyone, it will require discipline, courage and a great deal of self belief. If you think that you are up to the challenge, please read on.

The Rules

Artists who take part in this experiment must:

(1)Create original material that has integrity, quality and meaning.
(It is down to each individual artist to set out their own definitions of these words based on their current understanding, some suggested areas of investigation when doing this can be found on the following page.)

(2)Create, promote and distribute their own material

(3)Use creative, promotional and distribution tools provided by the new media.
(Tools provided by the new media e.g. email, online video, online radio, websites, digital home recording)

(4)Create or join networks (on a formal or informal basis) locally, nationally and globally to collaborate with other artists who have similar intentions and feeling.

(5)Act outside of the current industry framework

(6)Set themselves a goal to be reached by the end of this year:
e.g.
Sales
Audience reached
Downloads
Completed projects

(7)Document their experiment online using video and blogs.

Are You A Part Of The Experiment?

The Love Magic Movement

For Bob

Sonic Product Manifesto

By Zac Shaw, February 2005

"THE PROBLEM WITH MUSIC THESE DAYS

Music is in crisis. Artists, listeners and the industry are experiencing a complex array of problems. These problems are mostly due to the extent of which the industry has commercialized the interaction between artist and listener, and its subsequent failure to adapt to new technology, specifically digital music.

Creativity has been converted into commodity, perception into product. Using the apparatus of copyright law, a small number of corporations have engineered a lockdown on access to music for purposes of producing wealth. Their entire profit model has been based on compelling listeners to purchase a product that will grant them access to music.

This corporate juggernaut grew rapidly throughout the 20th century and consolidation has led to a vastly unbalanced concentration of power. Currently, just four media conglomerates dominate the record industry. In broadcasting, only two companies are responsible for the majority of radio stations. MTV is not only a monolithic source of music video, it is the most-watched television channel on the planet. This uneven convergence of power corrupts every other aspect of the music industry, from ticket sales to retail, distribution to media. More disturbingly, it leaves artists and listeners - arguably the soul of the industry - virtually powerless.

For over a century, the industry produced increasingly extraordinary profits without challenge until digital music made its debut. The explosion in peer-to-peer file sharing ushered in by Napster was the industry's wake-up call to the inevitability that the Internet would become the ultimate medium for music. The possibility of universal access to music rendered the old business model obsolete.

In the face of the rapid pace of technological innovation, the industry initiated a two-part strategy to maintain control over access to music. Backed by a century of copyright and corporate legislation, they systematically sued or bought out the creators of digital music technology. In turn, technological innovation in digital music slowed to a crawl, stuck in a legal quagmire. This has bought the industry time to pursue their ultimate goal: not to adapt their business model to the Internet, but to adapt the Internet to their business model."

To read more go to www.sonicproduct.net/manifesto.htm

Buckminster Fuller & The Experiment

Genius, Philosopher, Architect, Poet

"For the first time in history it is now possible to take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than any have ever known.
Only ten years ago the 'more with less' technology reached the point where this could be done. All humanity now has the option to become enduringly successful."

Fuller's 56 - year Experiment

In 1927, at the age of 32, Buckminster Fuller stood on the shores of Lake Michigan, prepared to throw himself into the freezing waters. His first child had died. He was bankrupt, discredited and jobless, and he had a wife and new-born daughter. On the verge of suicide, it suddenly struck him that his life belonged, not to himself, but to the universe. He chose at that moment to embark on what he called "an experiment to discover what the little, penniless, unknown individual might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity."

Over the next fifty-four years, he proved, time and again, that his most controversial ideas were practical and workable.
During the course of his remarkable experiment he:

* was awarded 28 U.S. patents
* authored 28 books
* received 47 honorary doctorates in the arts, science, engineering and the humanities
* received dozens of major architectural and design awards including, among many others, the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects and the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects
* created work which found itself into the permanent collections of museums around the world
* circled the globe 57 times, reaching millions through his public lectures and interviews

To read more on this beautiful human being go to www.bfi.org

The Trouble With Music

Inspirational Book By Matt Callahan

The Trouble with Music

"Yes-let's break the grip of Stars and Hits. Music could change the world. Read this book."
Pete Seeger

"The Trouble with Music isn't anything like most books about music. Those other books start by assuming that today's music world looked just the same yesterday and will be the same tomorrow. Mat Callahan understands that today's music world is a product of the past, struggling to bear the future. His story begins with reexamining what all music fundamentally shares, then sets about showing the ways in which those fundamentals have been distorted, all the while insisting we can free the music-and ourselves-to achieve a future worth celebrating. This isn't just a theory: Callahan, a working musician, crams his book with as much detail as ideas-and there's a LOT of ideas.

"Making music is a process as old as the human species,which means that if the music's in trouble because humanity as a whole is in trouble. The Trouble with Music speaks to those troubles and it maps a way out. It's invaluable." Dave Marsh, Rock & Rap Confidential

About The Book

There is a crisis facing music. The signs are everywhere, from the saturation of public space by tuneful trivia to the digital downloading controversy. Quantity has replaced quality. The number of units sold is now the criteria by which music is judged and high-gloss, mass-produced, low-content music is everywhere. You can't shop, eat, ride a bus or see a movie without hearing it as each day you are inundated with enticements to buy it. Like the replacement of essential nutriment by junk food, music lovers are expected to surrender their critical faculties and consume the phony McMusic that can be more effectively controlled and profitably sold than the genuine article.

Callahan unravels and elucidates the crises facing music as well as its liberatory potential. The Trouble with Music includes discussions of: technology and its effects on music making and listening; superabundance and the absence of critical thought; the development of radio; music criticism; copyright; the digital domain and the internet; labor and music making; and the special relationships between words, dance, politics, and music. A large segment of the general public seeks a relationship to music, which turns an exceptional profit for those who own and control it. Callahan provides a means of evaluating music and a powerful critique of the music industry. Whether you whistle at work, sing in the shower or conduct

Fnords

Have you seen the Fnords?

``Very nice,'' I said. ``But why did you bring me up here?''

``It's time for you to see the fnords,'' he replied. Then I woke up in bed and it was the next morning. I made breakfast in a pretty nasty mood, wondering if I'd seen the fnords, whatever the fell they were, in the hours he had blacked out, or if I would see them as soon as I went out into the street. I has some pretty gruesome ideas about them, I must admit. Creatures with three eyes and tentacles, survivors from Atlantis, who walked among us, invisible due to some form of mind shield, and did hideous work for the Illuminati. It was unnerving to contemplate, and I finally gave in to my fears and peeked out the window, thinking it might be better to see them from a distance first.

Nothing. Just ordinary sleepy people, heading for their busses and subways.

That calmed me a little, so I set out the toast and coffee and fetched the _New_York_Times_ from the hallway. I turned the radio to WBAI and caught some good Vivaldi, sat down, grabbed a piece of toast and started skimming the first page.

Then I saw the fnords.

The feature story involved another of the endless squabbles between Russia ad the U.S. in the UN General Assembly, and after each direct quote from the Russian delegate I read a quite distinct ``Fnord!'' The second lead was about a debate in congress on getting the troops out of costa Rica; every argument presented by Senator Bacon was followed by another ``Fnord!'' At the bottom of the page was a _Times_ depth-type study of the growing pollution problem and the increasing use of gas masks among New Yorkers; the most distressing chemical facts were interpolated with more ``Fnords.''

Suddenly I saw Hagbard's eyes burning into me and heard his voice: ``Your heart will remain calm. Your adrenalin gland will remain calm. Calm, all-over calm. You will not panic. you will look at the fnord and see the it. You will not evade it or black it out. you will stay calm and face it.'' And further back, way back: my first-grade teacher writing FNORD on the blackboard, while a wheel with a spiral design turned and turned on his desk, turned and turned, and his voice droned on, IF YOU DON'T SEE THE FNORD IT CAN'T EAT YOU, DON'T SEE THE FNORD, DON'T SEE THE FNORD . . .

For more on this fascinating subject see www.rawilson.com or www.benmacklive.com.

Experiment Quotes

Integrity

Integrity is the essence of everything successful.
Buckminster Fuller

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
Samuel Johnson

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
Buddha

Quality

Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions.
Robert M. Pirsig

Quality is never an accident, it is always the work of intelligent effort.
John Ruskin

The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.
Vince Lombardi

Meaning

The best of us still have our aspirations for the supreme goals of life, which is so often mocked by prosperous people who now control the world. We still believe that the world has a deeper meaning than what is apparent, and that therein the human soul finds its ultimate harmony and peace. We still know that only in spiritual wealth does civilization attain its end, not in a prolific production of materials, and not in the competition of intemperate power with power.
Rabindranath Tragore

The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.
Carl Jung

Visual Resources

Bob Marley Natural Mystic Live

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Eddie Cochran - C'mon Everybody

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Tom Waits - Chocolate Jesus

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Bill Hicks on Marketing

4.72

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Grateful Dead - Truckin'

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ALEX IN THE VOID "CHOP CHOP"

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The Secret to You

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Lens Resources for the Experimentally Minded

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Discordia is the fun house mirror of our society. Suppose a group of people approaches a mirror at the carnival fun house. Each person sees the same distorted reflection of themselves. Some turn away, uncomfortable with what they see. Some people lau...

Ben Mack, Think Two Products Ahead and Legend Platform Branding

Learn about Think Two Products Ahead: Secrets the Big Advertising Agencies Don't Want You to Know and How to Use Them for Bigger Profits by Ben Mack. Leverage the Legend Platform Ben presents in the book for maximum profitability in your own busi...

Experiment Resources

Poker Without Cards: A Consciousness Thriller

by: Ben Mack

Amazon Price: $20.70 (as of 07/14/2009)

The Secret

by: Rhonda Byrne

Amazon Price: $14.37 (as of 07/14/2009)

Prometheus Rising

by: Robert Anton Wilson

Amazon Price: $13.29 (as of 07/14/2009)

Valis

by: Philip K. Dick

Amazon Price: $10.94 (as of 07/14/2009)

Pan's Labyrinth (New Line Two-Disc Platinum Series)

Amazon Price: $12.99 (as of 07/14/2009)

The Experiment - Music Meaning Free Thinking Independence Anarchy And Rock Music

What Is The Experiment?

The Experiment

The post that started it all

The Rules

Sonic Product Manifesto

By Zac Shaw, February 2005

Buckminster Fuller & The Experiment

Genius, Philosopher, Architect, Poet

The Trouble With Music

Inspirational Book By Matt Callahan

Fnords

Have you seen the Fnords?

Experiment Quotes

Visual Resources

Lens Resources for the Experimentally Minded

Experiment Resources

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